Happy Halloween!

I'm baaaaack!

I took a mini-vacation to visit my best friend in Milwaukee over the weekend and got back late last night!  I'll get caught up in this space as quickly as possible, but in the meantime, have a happy (and safe) Halloween and enjoy a little Jack Skellington...

xoxo,
M

Beer Brewing

Oh yeah...

Tool Lady, happily, and patiently, beginning the waiting process...

Virtual ---> Reality

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about the internet and all of the time I find myself spending there (here).  There is definitive value that the internet has to offer...connection to old friends via facebook and email, inspiration and ideas via Pinterest, community and shared space through blogs, entrepreneurship via Etsy,  education via online courses.  The lists can go on and on...

In addition, after much debate, I recently upgraded my very old cell phone and purchased an iPhone, which has propelled me squarely into the online world pretty much at all times (constant access to emails, facebook, games, Twitter and Instagram)...holy hell.  I'm still unsure how I feel about it all and am newly experimenting with some of it (I'm beegirl76 on Instagram and Twitter if you're interested in that sort of thing), but I do have to admit, most of it is incredibly convenient.

Instagram photos look great on my iPhone,
but I'm not sure how people get them to look equally as great
in an online format, such as this one.  Ideas???

However, while I find myself stimulated by this virtual reality pretty much all the time, I also find myself longing to find an appropriate balance between virtual ideas and the reality of life itself.  I mean, really, how many Pins can one have and what good do they do anyone if you don't actually use that inspiration to try new things in actual reality.  If we are always connected, always online, how will we ever get anything done?  Right.

Enter Virtual ---> Reality, a new challenge I am setting for myself on an as often as possible basis.  The challenge is simply to take some of the inspiration I am finding in Internet Land, practice it in real life, then post about it here, completing the circle...and accomplishing a few thing in the process.

So, let's start!

My first intentional attempt at completing the circle happened two weekends ago with the pickling of 12 pints of cherry tomatoes.  While I have never eaten a pickled cherry tomato, I couldn't think of a better way to deal with part of our massive harvest then to try something brand new.  Apparently, pickled tomatoes are good to use on anything you would normally use relish on.  Who knew?  Well, I guess Garden Betty did :-)

My second project, Pumpkin French Toast came from the Minimalist Baker.  I found this late on a Sunday night and had grand plans to have this waiting for my family on Monday morning.  But it was already late, so I decided to just get up a little earlier than normal, prep it, let it sit for a bit and then pop it in the oven.  Then, I didn't set my alarm.  Ugh...the best laid plans...

Despite a bit of a rush, I threw it all together, got it in the oven and was able to pull it our just in time for Fish Girl to grab some on her way to school :-)  Breakfast success!  Whew!

And so continues my new challenge!  Care to join along?  Oh, please do!  What have you found online recently that has inspired you to create in real life?  Please feel free to share your stories and links in the comments below!  

xoxo,

M

Recent Acquisitions

Here are a couple of items that have found their way into our home recently...

1) An old school rotisserie!

While I had no idea what she was talking about when she first mentioned this contraption (I grew up eating  mostly vegetarian), Tool Lady grew up using one of these quite often and is very excited about it!

She picked it up at an antique store, got it home and discovered that the motor didn't work...but if you know anything about Tool Lady, you know she likes to tinker with everything!  So, she cracked it open, by-passed the on/off switch and, like magic, had that puppy working in no time flat!  Instead of plugging it in and turning it on, all we have to do is plug it in and it starts working!  Let me tell you, that was one delicious roast!

2) A bread box (+) found on craigslist

This little stand will live in our pantry against the back wall and will house bread in the top drawer and...well, I'm not sure yet what it'll hold in it's two bottom cabinets.  Apples?  Potatoes?  Onions and garlic?  Ideas?

Forgive the random white blobs on the screens...
they used to be awful cardboard ducks that we
attempted to pull off, but the glue is pretty crazy

3) Beer making supplies, also found on craigslist

The kindest woman was selling her wine making supplies for a steal of a deal and wonderfully, most of the same supplies are needed for beer making!!!  So, we jumped on it all and got it for a fraction of what we would have paid for it at the beer supply store!  She only used the whole set up twice (some of the items were actually never used), which makes the whole thing even better!!!

I swear, if we had a bigger house and more money, we'd be scouring antique shops and craigslist all the time!!!  

What about you?  Do you just love making old things new again???

xoxo,

M

Harvest Swap

Last weekend, Tool Lady and I attended our very first Harvest Swap!  It was based on the framework of the Food Swap Network and was hosted by the Radical Homemakers of New Mexico (Erin and Kyce)!

Although there were instructions given, neither of us had ever attended anything like this before so we really didn't know what to bring or how to package it all, so we kept it simple...Jars labelled with permanent marker ;-)

Here's what we brought:

• 7 pounds of cherry tomatoes
• 2 quarts of unsweetened apple sauce
• 1 pint of pickle chips
• 1 half pint of pickled jalapenos
• 2 half pints of lemon cuke relish
• 3/4 pint of hot pepper tomatillo salsa
• 1 half pint of sweet pepper jam
• 3 pints of pickled cherry tomatoes
• 1 pint of lemon cuke pickles
• 1 pint of honey lemon apple jam
• 1 pint of apple butter
• 2 half pints of vanilla rhubarb jam
• 1 pint of apple wedges in cinnamon red hot syrup

And here's what we came home with...

• A bag of frozen apricots
• Roasted garlic, whole grain mustard
• Smokey hot raspberry jam
• Dill (dried)
• A beautiful whole wheat sourdough starter
• Pesto
• Apple chutney
• Green ketchup
• Peach salsa
• Grape jelly
• Plum jelly X 2
• Green tomato jam
• A quart of whole tomatoes
• Peach BBQ sauce
• A bag of apple nut bars
• A jar of fermented yumminess 
• A mystery jam/some sort of fruit butter
• (and 1 pound of our tomatoes & 1 quart of our apple sauce...everyone has tomatoes and apples this year, so I'm surprised we got rid of as much as we actually did)

Not only was it fun to see a few familiar faces, it was wonderful to meet some new, like-minded people!  What was even better, though, was all of the absolutely amazing foods everyone created!  Gorgeous, tasty, creative, simple...absolutely amazing!  

I do hope our hostesses will make this an annual affair!  After looking at everyone's bounty, and after tasting some truly amazing items, not only do we want to get out there again, but man...we've got to up our game! ;-)

xoxo,

M

Harvest Monday

Happy Monday everyone!

Well, things aren't incredibly exciting here in the way of harvests now.  We do, however, still have a few tomato vines that are holding onto some beautiful fruits (a Barnes Mountain Yellow, two Orange Flesh Purple Smudges and an Italian Heirloom), though they are ripening rather slowly with the cooler weather and shorter days!  They will have to, unfortunately, be stripped later this week as freezing temps are forecasted for several days in a row.  Oh well...it was only a matter of time, right?  Besides, our first "harvesting" of goat milk was excitement enough for one week ;-)

This weeks totals:

• Sage = 1 oz
• Tomatoes = 5 lb 7 oz 
• Eggs = 23...cooler temps + a few molting chickens = not a whole lot of eggs

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Happy harvesting!

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions

xoxo

M

The First Milking

Welp, it's official...we have decided to move forward with the goat milking gig and yesterday afternoon was our first shot at it!

The agreement is that we will milk twice a week (on Saturdays and Wednesdays) with the understanding that 1) we will give two weeks notice if we (or she) will be out of town to ensure milking is covered and 2) if an emergency occurs on either side, the other will jump in to cover the milking.

We brought some old, wrinkled apples and a few wrinkled tomatoes to feed them in the hopes of winning them over a bit and they were very happy to have the treats (we are complete strangers, after all)!

It took an hour from start to finish (I'm sure as we get better/quicker, the process will go much smoother) and included a bit of attitude from Baby (the milker), but nothing too terrible.  She figured out it was easier to relax than to battle ;-)

Once we were all done, we came home to strain the milk and see how much we actually wound up with!  

We don't have any official goat milking tools yet except for a single stainless steal bucket, so we strained the milk using a metal strainer along with several layers of coffee filters and some cheesecloth.  It might not have been pretty, but the layers worked perfectly to remove all the random hairs and particles that came home with the milk!

All in all, this was a great first experience!  We got almost 5 quarts of fresh, delicious milk in trade for about an hour and 20 minutes of our time (total, drive time included) which seems like a heck of a deal to me!!!  Now we just have to learn how to make some yummy yogurt and a little cheese ;-)

Linking up to Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways #50

Link Tag

A few items that have caught my eye recently...

Photo source

Food & Kitchen

• The above, beautiful book, An Everlasting Meal, is definitely on my wishlist!

Preservation & Preparation

• Pros and cons of popular water storage containers
• 72 hour Bug Out Bag

Gardening & Farming

• I appreciate Liz's view on how Kitchen Gardening is a political act.  Good stuff in the post and in the comments, too :-)
• Oh, how I long to see these little faces snorting back at me while doing my own morning chores!  Ahhh...someday!

Environment & Education

• Ugh...elevated carbon dioxide may impair reasoning?  Well, duh and sh*t.  Now what?

Just Because...

• Most of the duct tape ideas here are pretty silly, but I wouldn't mind a nifty crochet hook pouch ;-)
• Erica's Open Letter to a Busy Person was just what I needed to read last Wednesday.  Maybe it will be good for you to read it, too...
• Mumford & Sons - I Will Wait (live on Letterman) 

Hope you're enjoying a lovely weekend!

xoxo
M

Possible Goat Milking Gig

Last weekend, while browsing Craigslist, Tool Lady found a posting titled "Goat Milking Gig".  So, she asked if it sounded like a good idea, and of course, I said yes!  After a few emails and phone calls, it was decided that we should meet, check each other out, check the set up out and get a little tutorial on goat milking...you know, because neither of us have ever milked a goat before in our lives...ever.

So, after work this evening, Tool Lady and I went to see a woman about some goats ;-)

The set up seems just about perfect...There are four goats; a grandma (who can be a bit protective of her space), two daughters (one who is in milk) and one granddaughter (born in July).  The goat who is in milk (one of the daughters) gives about 5 quarts of milk each day (that's a lot of milk).  The owner of the goats (a nice woman named Daven who runs Milk and Honey) is looking for someone to check in on the goats, feed them and milk the momma 2-3 times a week in exchange for the milk that is given.  Pretty cool gig if you ask me.  Daven has even offered to help us learn how to make cheese and yogurt!

So, officially, we are all going to take a day or two to think about any questions that might come up and then move forward from there!  Now, since we've never milked goats, handled goats or done any kind of exchange/share like this before, we're a little nervous. We are also very excited about 1) the experience we'll get and 2) all that fresh milk!!!

I'll let you all know what becomes of this possibility!

xoxo,
M

Harvest Monday

Happy Monday everyone!

Tool Lady taming the jungle.
I escaped Homework Land just long enough to snap
 a couple of pictures :-)

How do you know that your wife loves you?  When she chooses to spend the majority of her Saturday cleaning up the garden and bringing in what's left to harvest while you work on homework for 14 hours straight!  True story, and I am immensely grateful!

Tool Lady and a very big Sunflower head!  

Aside from a few random tomatoes and our daily eggs, the rest of our harvests this week came in on Saturday during the big clean up Tool Lady did for us.  She pretty much pulled everything except for three heirloom tomatoes (2 Orange Flesh Purple Smudge and 1 Barnes Mountain Yellow)  we're hoping will still ripen up a bit, some chard and our potatoes.

While I am sad to see it all torn up (the yard looks incredibly bare in comparison to the jungle it was just a few short weeks ago), I am quite relieved to be given some respite from the daily maintenance of it all.  As soon as the potatoes come in we can pretty much call it a year, and a very good year at that!

Bunching onions

Happy Yummy Peppers

Bi-Color Cherry Tomatoes - over 23 pounds were pulled in!  Crazy!

In the clean up, many, many tomatoes were brought in, though only some of them are in the tally below.  I've decided to do what I did last year and record only the viable ones (ripe, or near ripe) this week.  As the others ripen up over the next few weeks or if we use them green, I'll count them towards their respective weekly totals.  This way I'm not cheating our numbers by hoping/assuming that they'll all be edible ;-)

More Bi-Color Cherry Tomatoes

Tomatillos

Peruvian Purple Peppers
They might be small but they are incredibly HOT!

This weeks totals:

• Apples
• Golden Delicious =  10 oz
• Beets = 1 lb
• Bunching Onions = 14 oz
• Chard = 2 oz
• Cucumbers 
• Lemon = 2 lb 13 oz 
• Mint = 3 lbs
• Mystery Melon = 2 lb 8 oz
• Peppers
• Happy Hot = 4 oz
• Happy Yummy = 1 lb
• Jalapeno = 1 oz
• Peruvian Purple = 6 oz
• Rhubarb = 1 lb 2 oz
• Tomatillos = 3 lb 2 oz
• Tomatoes = 31 lb 13 oz (23 lb 9 oz of cherry tomatoes alone!)
• Eggs = 32

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Happy harvesting!

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions

xoxo

M

Link Tag

Here are few items that have caught my eye recently...

photo from Anthology Magazine

Food & Kitchen

• Anthology shared this delicious looking Butternut Apple Tart that is definitely going on my list of recipes to try!
• I am really hoping that Tool Lady will make this delicious ice cream custard and honeycomb candy for me very soon!

Preservation & Preparation

• Sharon Astyk recently posted her year round plan for preserving - Preserving Food Around the Year 
• Eat at Dixiebelle's wonderful compilation of books and links- Food Preserving Resources
• 12 reasons you'll need water in an emergency.  True story.
• Some good tips on how to actually use what's in your pantry.  Make sure to check out the comments of this post as well as this new-to-me blog Prepping to Survive at the core of it all

Education & Environment

• A new study shows that kids are twice as active on natural playgrounds than on traditional ones?  True story.  Now get outside and play with your kids!
• I'll be very curious to see how this environmental experiment goes in California in the coming years.

Just for Fun

• I am in love with this young lady's voice (and style).  I do hope she maintains her awesomeness once the madness of celebrity hits!

• This little guy is awesome in his genuine excitement!  The first two minutes of this video are the best!!!

Hope you're enjoying a lovely weekend!

xoxo
M

The Calm After the Storm

The forecast called for rain and wind yesterday.

The storm came in on Thursday night, bringing lightening & thunder at 7AM on Friday (which is rare, but not unheard of).  It rained a little, then cleared up and circled around us for most of the day.

At about 3:30, the sky started darkening and wind picked up.  Naturally, I was at work, so we brought the girls in from playing outside and I checked on our fieldtrip groups.  All was well.  The sky cracked open with a flood of rain and a little bit of hail.  No biggie, but more like the summer storms we used to have than the fall storms we are used to.  

Then, just as the storm was finishing up and moving to the north, all of our smart phones started vibrating and beeping...we were being issued an emergency weather alert...a tornado warning...and were told to shelter in place.    

Yes, a tornado warning in Santa Fe.  A tornado warning in Santa Fe.  To the best of my recollection, this has never happened before.  Whatever you call it...global warming...global weirding...I don't like it.  

Anyhow, we sheltered for a bit but nothing came of the storm beyond some quick moisture and the power loss of a few street lights and a few homes across town.  All was restored within a very short amount of time and everyone was fine.  The storm apparently calmed itself and kept moving to the northeast, leaving nothing but beautiful skies behind.  Thank goodness :-) 

{this moment}

{this moment inspired by Soule Mama}  

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Winter Tomatoes - Coming Inside

Can one actually grow tomatoes inside throughout the winter?  Well, I guess we'll find out soon enough, ha?

So far, the process has been fairly painless...the cuttings rooted well, transplanted fine and even recovered enough in the last month to put out some new growth and several little flowers!

So, with the cooler evenings (and treats of frost) we brought in our three pots of cherry tomatoes a couple of days ago (to clarify, two of the cherry tomatoes are cuttings, while the third was planted in a pot as a transplant at the beginning of the summer and I'm just trying to prolong its life ;-) )

While my original intention was to spread them around the house they are now positioned on the bottom shelf of our grow light stand in our laundry room.  Once they actually came inside, it became apparent that they would take up much more room than I originally envisioned, so I trimmed some of the suckers and onto the stand they went!

The three black pots in the photo below are our tomatoes.  I strategically placed them so the will grow behind the lights and against the wall so 1) they'll take up less space and 2) so I can utilize the wall and back braces of the stand to better support their vines as they continue to grow (fingers crossed).  Right now the vines are only being supported by a few bamboo sticks and binder clips to rest their little stems on.

From left to right we have: bi-color cherry, yellow pear cherry and sweet red cherry.
The terra cotta pot holds one of our sad house plants I'm trying to revive and the
recycled yogurt containers hold strawberries I'm attempting to propagate in the
hopes we can transplant them into the pallet beds next spring. 

With all the new growth and flowering happening, I am quite hopeful they will continue to produce.  There really is nothing quite like a tomato grown in the sun and fresh off the vine, so their quality is yet to be determined.  However, I may think differently if I can add a few of these babies to my salad in the dead of winter.  Time will tell...

Harvest Monday

Happy Monday, everyone!

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, the cold is toying with us!  We were forecasted to hit freezing temps last weekend, but alas, nothing happened.  I'm guessing this will be our last large harvest before bringing in all the green tomatoes in the next week or so and the potatoes that we're hoping have matured under cover, but I may be wrong...the weather here is pretty unpredictable, so we'll see.

We did wind up with a couple of surprises this week, though...a few delicious strawberries (who knew those would come back around?), three whole, ripe Mystery Melons (notice the rind in the photo below...it's supposed to look like that...and not like the one we had a week ago), and a bunch of Dave's Happy Yummy Peppers (notice the two different looking, orange peppers below?  They both came from the same plant.  Interesting, right?)

Man, will I miss the variety  that we've been blessed with this year once the garden is really put to rest.  I've fallen in love with all of the colors that came out of the yard this season!!!

Oh!  On a bit of a bummer note...I found an error in our monetary tally sheet.  It turns out I was crediting us twice for our eggs.  We can't say the chickens pay for themselves and then also count the eggs as income on the garden sheet, now can we?  well, at least not honestly ;-)  I got it fixed, but am feeling quite frustrated as 1) I made such a silly mistake and 2) I thought we were really close to meeting our goal for the year.  I'm really not so sure anymore since the bulk of our final crops came in last week.  After all this, I did wind up amortizing our drip irrigation costs from 2012 thru 2014.  I couldn't bear looking at such a huge number, so I spread it out a bit.  Oh well...

Anyhow, in egg related news, our Ladies have slowed their laying down considerably with only 43 eggs this week.  It's been steadily going down for the past couple of weeks with our shorter and cooler days, but to pull 6 a day from the nesting boxes instead of the 13 we were getting at the height of summer is quite a drastic fall.  It's OK though, we couldn't keep up with their production at it's peak anyway ;-)

Mystery Melon, Happy Yummy Peppers, Italian Heirloom Tomatoes & Lemon Cukes

Daphne's Cherokee Purple Tomatoes & Trail of Tear Beans, Romas Tomatoes,
Tomatillos & Lemon Cukes

The tiniest German Butterball Potatoes.
We kinda forgot about this bin so it's a wonder we got any ;-)

More cukes and more tomatoes.
OH...and a couple of random strawberries!!!   Who knew???

Love = an Italian Heirloom

Orange Flesh Purple Smudge Tomato

An almost ripe Pie Pumpkin.  We'll see about this one...

This weeks totals:

• Apples
• Granny Smith = 1 lb 10 oz
• Red Fuji = 1 lb
• Golden Delicious = 4 lb 6 oz
• Gala = 3 lb 12 oz
• Chard = 2 oz
• Cucumbers 
• Lemon = 6 lb 4 oz 
• Mystery = 1 lb
• Mixed Greens = 2 oz
• Mystery Melon = 6 lb 9 oz
• Pears = 8 oz
• Peppers
• Happy Yummy = 10 oz
• Jalapeno = 1 oz
• Pole Beans = 2 oz
• Potatoes (German Butterballs) = 10 oz
• Pumpkins (Pie) = 11 lb 12 oz
• Strawberries = 1 oz
• Tomatillos = 2 lb 11 oz
• Tomatoes = 11 lb 5 oz
• Eggs = 43

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Happy harvesting!

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions